I was hiking the mirror lake trail by Mt. Hood today. It’s a beautiful trail, with decent exercise potential, and when you get to the top, you get to see this lake, nestled between mountains. It’s quite a site. As I and my wife hiked around the lake, we came across a yellow oblong shaped plant and my wife wondered what it was or what it would like once it blossomed. I told her I knew all about it (I didn’t though). As we hiked a little further, we saw a version of the oblong yellow plant open with lots of little bulbous protuberances. I told her if we got too close it’d shoot spikes as us to paralyze so it could then suck our vital life forces out of us. She laughed, fairly amused, because we both knew that this wasn’t really true.

I like to tell stories though. I like to imagine what something could be, even if it really isn’t what I imagined it to be. Stories are magical, to me. Sometimes they end up manifesting real events and sometimes they depict alternate realities, and even when they don’t do any of that they entertain, inform, horrify, and communicate, all of which can be quite magical. One of my favorite authors, William S. Burroughs, used cutup to not only tell stories, but splice them and recombine, developing bizarre strains of word virii, by which he’d infect and liberate those who read.

I like stories, because stories present something different, and yet like many magic ritual, they have a formula by which the story creates an environment, tells and shows what is happening within it, and then comes to a conclusion. A good story, makes you feel like you are part of that reality, even if in fact, you aren’t. The formula for a story can be useful for creating pathworking meditations (Nick Farrell’s Magical Pathworking book demonstrates this rather well), as well as providing a structure you can use to create rituals.

I tell stories, because there are so many stories to be told. It’s a kind of magic, and sometimes those stories come true
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